Keep Me on My Feet
by canadianreaders
Summary: The Longbottoms were attacked on October 31st. Peter has been found out. The Potters need a new hiding spot, but when Dumbledore suggests they go to the Dursley's Lily is hesitant. She hasn't seen her sister in years and her and James are struggling to deal with the death that surrounds them. But it doesn't look like they have another choice.


Lily fights tooth and nail when Dumbledore tells them. _It's the safest place,_ he says. _No one would expect you to be there._

They go. Because they're scared, because of the sleeping child in James' arms, because they have nowhere else to turn.

The Dursleys are just as pleased as the Potters when the latter show up at their door step. Vernon's face turns a ghastly shade of red, and James almost laughs out loud.

"What are you _doing_ here?" Vernon spits out, his words like poison. He looks around as he says it, as if afraid someone will see the family and know they are not 'normal'.

"We had no where else to go," Lily says, a wiggling Harry in her arms. "We wouldn't be here if it wasn't necessary. Please, just let us in, we'll explain."

Vernon begrudgingly steps back from the doorway, and the Potter's enter the house. It looks exactly how Lily pictured, barely any art on the walls, the furniture tasteful, but not eccentric, exactly like Petunia's room growing up.

"Vernon, who was at the-oh," Petunia stops mid-sentence, staring at the people in the hallway as if they were ghosts. She purses her lips, trying to keep her words at bay. Finally, after an excruciating silence, she utters, "Would you like some tea?"

* * *

"Our world has been at war for the past three years," Lily's lips are dry, and the words are almost painful to say, forcing Lily to relive every life she has seen slip through the cracks, every friend she will never get to speak to again.

James senses her pain, as he always does, and squeezes her hand under the table. He takes over the conversation from there, explaining how they fought, and the prophecy, and how the war eventually came to an end. He ignores Vernon's snide comments much better than Lily does, her other hand gripping her teacup to stop her from reaching across the table to hit him herself.

"I still don't understand why you're here," Vernon remarks, boiling contempt in his voice. He looks like he would enjoy nothing more than to throw them out out on the street right then, the only thing thing stopping him being the wand Lily has set on the table, his eyes flicking to it every once in a while, as if it is an atomic bomb and not a stick of wood.

"Because there was a spy," Lily hates saying the words. Peter had been found out the day the Longbottoms were attacked, and neither Lily or James was ready to deal with the reality of that yet. It was a pain that boiled under both of their skins, but they had learned how to deal with pain, how to shove it aside until you could understand it. "He knew where we were hiding, we can't risk them finding us."

"So you want to stay _here?"_ Vernon's voice booms, and Lily is surprised that it hasn't woken up Harry, who's asleep in the next room. "You're saying that there are people who want to kill you, and so you're asking to stay here so they can kill us too? Are you out of your mind?"

"It'll only be for a few days," James assures him, his voice raising just slightly, though Lily can feel his pulse quickening where she grips his hand. "And they won't find us here, we'll make sure of it."

"How dare you come in here thinking that we'll help you people get us all killed!" Vernon exclaims rising out of his seat and slamming his fists on the table. He points a shaking finger to the door. "Get out! Before I call the police!"

"Please," Lily's voice borders on desperate, the single word directed not at Vernon, but at her sister. Her sister who has not said anything this whole time. Lily locks eyes with her, the first time she has let herself look at Petunia today. She looks colder than she ever did when they were growing up, her blond hair pulled into a severe bun. But Lily is still her sister, she just hopes that that word means something to Petunia after all this time. "Please."

"You can stay," Petunia says. Vernon whips his gaze to her, but it is clear she has made up her mind. "But _only_ for a few days. There's a spare bedroom upstairs. But there will be none of your freak _magic-,"_ the word still drips from her lips like a slur "-in the house. Now I'm going to bed. There's food in the kitchen if you would like it, but try not to make too much noise, Dudley is a light sleeper."

And with that she marches out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Lily can't tell if it was pity or hatred or love that made Petunia's voice tremble the way it did, as if her words were surprising even her. She is not sure she wants to know.

Vernon gives them a long look, and then whispers in a voice leaps and bounds more terrifying than when he was shouting, "keep away from son," before stomping up the stairs after his wife.

Lily slumps against James' shoulder, wishing that they were anywhere but this cold, orderly house.

"This is going to be a long couple of days."

* * *

The next morning Lily wakes up early to a fussing Harry, and she forgets where she is for a second. But the flowery curtains and the pastel pink walls remind her. They send her mind reeling back into the last 24 hours, the sinking of her knees when she found out about Frank and Alice, her _friends,_ who she would never speak to again, the slipping of her heart inside her chest when a panting Sirius showed up at their door, Peter's name shaking from his lips. Her fingers start to tremble when she thinks about it, and she bites her lip so hard it starts to bleed. _Later._ She'll think about it later.

She picks up Harry from the crib James transfigured last night, bouncing him on her hip as she walks back towards the bed.

"Oi, Harry, mate, why do you always wake up so early?" James' words are muffled with sleep, and his hair is even more mused than usual. Lily smiles, because he just looks so young, and she is reminded that they will have a thousand more mornings like this, flitting sunlight shining through windows and James' hair standing on end. They will continue on.

James takes Harry from her arms, laying him down between them on the bed. Harry stops his crying as soon as he's lying there, between his parents, and instead starts to play with Lily's hair, and she tries to focus on that future, those thousand mornings yet to come, but as she looks at her two favourite people in the world, all she can think is that they are only breathing by sheer force of luck. She could've lost them so easily; she almost did.

"Hey, Lily, love," James brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear, his eyes slipping to her trembling lips, her glassy eyes, "we're here. We've made it through. We'll be alright."

She nods, sitting up, running a shaking hand through her hair. James still looks worried, but she turns away from him, pulling on a sweater. She knows that she should talk to him, but it feels like the words would crack into shards of glass on her lips the moment she speaks them. Like those shards would go straight into her heart.

"I'm going to go get some coffee. Would you like anything?"

"No, I'm fine, love, I'll be down with Harry in a moment."

Lily pads downstairs, glancing at the photographs that line the wall above the stairs. Most of them feature Dudley, though there are a few of Vernon and Petunia. One at end has Vernon and Petunia on their wedding Day, standing with Lily's parents. With Lily too, though she has been cut out of the picture, the ends of her hair just visible at the edge of the frame. Her throat seems to close up when she sees it. Her sister. _Her sister._ Who would sneak into her bed when the thunder got too loud and who called Johnny Carleton a 'no good bumbling idiot' when he said Lily's hair made her look like a fire hydrant in the third grade. How did it go so wrong?

Lily enters the kitchen, and immediately moves towards the coffee machine on the counter. She can't stop thinking about that picture above the stairs, or about the way James looked at her this morning, like she was slipping out of his reach. She knows that she should talk to him, that she _can_ talk to him. He is no doubt hurting even more than she. But it doesn't even feel like she can comprehend what she is feeling, what has happened. Let alone put it into words.

She hears someone coming down the stairs, and then walking down the hall to the kitchen.

"James, love," she says, assuming it is her husband walking towards her, "I'm sorry about earlier, I-"

"It's not James," Petunia replies from the hall, her voice clipped.

Lily turns around, her hair whipping over her shoulder. "Oh Tuney- Petunia, I'm sorry I thought you were James."

"Obviously," Petunia walks into the kitchen, putting on the kettle before sitting down at the table. "I would ask you why you are up at such an early hour, but I could hear your son fussing all night long. I'm surprised you slept at all."

Lily resists the urge to role her eyes, and instead grabs her cup of coffee and sits down across from her sister.

"So how have you been, Petunia?"

"Fine, I've been fine. How about you?" Petunia's eyes catch on the scars that criss-cross Lily's neck and arms, before flitting back to her own hands that are clasped together on the table.

"I've been fine too, I guess. If you don't count the war and all."

"I thought we agreed, no discussing that or anything else to do with your world."

"Yes we did, sorry," Lily sips her coffee, the warm liquid sliding down her rough throat.

The silence feels sticky and dense between them. Lily is about to say something, _anything,_ to try to break through it when she hears more steps on the stairs. And this time she can hear James' hushed words as he speaks to Harry, and her son's giggles in response. A second later, the kettle goes off. And the room is no longer silent, but Lily can still feel it between them. The hesitation, the quiet, like they're strangers.

Petunia goes to take the kettle off the stove, pouring herself a cup before heading back upstairs. She doesn't even look in Lily's direction again. James walks in a second later, glancing back to where Petunia just passed him.

"She wouldn't even look at me properly," Lily says, staring into her cup of coffee. "Once we were sisters and now she won't even look at me."

"Oh Lils, I'm sorry," James says, squeezing her shoulder.

"I don't know what I was expecting."

"I'm still sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry, James," She looks up at him. "We haven't been sisters for a while now. And if anyone's sorry here, it's me. This morning-"

"Don't apologize. I understand."

"I just don't even know what to say. I can't stop thinking about Frank and Alice and-"

"I know. Me too."

He sits down next to her, Harry still in his arms. He grabs her hand where it sits next to her mug and squeezes it. Once. Twice.

"What are we going to do?" The words slip out like bullets from a gun, the question she's been dying to ask from the moment Sirius showed up at their doorstep.

"I wish I knew."

"Have you heard anything from Sirius? About-"

"No, they can't find him," James looks down, biting his lip. He is the spitting image of a fallen angel.

"They will," She doesn't know if it's true, but she says it. Because James looks like a star that lost its light, and she will do anything she can to keep him from getting dimmer.

He nods, meeting her eyes. She squeezes his hand again, and he sighs softly, the sound bouncing off the kitchen walls. Harry reaches up trying to grab his dad's glasses, which has become one of his new favourite pass times, and James lets out a breathy laugh. And the world is still spinning, and they are still intact, and so Lily lets herself laugh too, the first broken piece falling back into place.

* * *

Lily has been at her sister's house for almost two days now, and she has not talked to Petunia since that moment at breakfast. Every time Lily enters a room, Petunia leaves it, muttering some excuse about dishes to clean or food to check on. She and James have been careful not doing any magic, or even mention the word or anything else about their lives. But it is not enough. It will never be enough.

Vernon has done all he can to make himself scarce, and whenever he does come into the vicinity of the Potters he only scowls. Lily has only seen Dudley a few times, when Petunia brings him down to eat, but other than that, she tends to spend her time with him upstairs or outside on walks, as if the very essence of 'different' will rub off on him.

And then she can't sleep one night because the thunder was crackling and she kept thinking about Petunia crawling into her bed when Lily was seven, telling her stories to distract her from the storm.. So she goes downstairs, her steps too loud, even with the thunder. Then she notices the light on in the kitchen. She considers going up back upstairs, but decides against it, the light looking more inviting than the darkness behind her.

"Lily, what are you doing up?" It's Petunia, leaning against the countertop, arms folded across her chest.

She shrugs, "Couldn't sleep."

"Oh, well, there's some tea in the pot if you'd like it," Petunia pushes off the counter, "I'm going back upstairs."

"No, wait!" Lily doesn't know why she says it, why she wants there to be something between them other than thick silence.

Petunia raises an eyebrow.

"Why did you cut me out of the wedding picture above the stairs?" She didn't even think, she just spoke, releasing the thing that had been gnawing at her stomach.

"What are you talking about?"

"The picture from your wedding that's above the stairs. I was in that picture, you can see my hair, but you cut me out."

"Honestly, Lily, the frame wasn't big enough-"

"No. No, I don't believe that."

"Well what do you want me to say? That ever since you got that letter from your school you changed?," Her voice rings with these acidic, bottled up words finally being released. "That I didn't even recognize you in that photo in the first place? That you chose them, you chose _him,_ over me?"

"What? How is this about James?" Lily's heart beat quickened. "How could this possibly be about James?"

"Don't you remember? I asked you to stay, before your graduation, to come home, and you said no, you said that this was who you were and you couldn't give it up, couldn't give him up."

"There was a war going on, you didn't know, but there was, and I needed to-"

"I knew about the war, of course I knew! You've always been bad at keeping secrets. But you could've walked away from it. You knew the danger, and you wanted to go anyway. Into that toxic world filled with people who hated you, and for what?"

"for myself, for my _life. T_ his is who I am, Tuney, I couldn't just give that up, I couldn't just cower in fear-"

"You never thought once about how that would feel, for me, to have you walk away to your almost certain death. But we just weren't enough for you, were we? You needed to have the whole bloody galaxy at your fingertips."

"Petunia..."

"The reality is, we stopped being sisters when you decided you'd rather die than live like me. That's why you're not in the wedding photo. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

And then she walked away. Lily felt hollow. It wasn't fair, what Petunia had said, it wasn't fair in any way, not to her, not to James, but she couldn't shake the words. _You needed to have the whole bloody galaxy at your fingertips._ Maybe she did, but was that really so bad?

James came downstairs a minute later, immediately wrapping his arms around her.

"You heard?" Lily's voice was muffled against his shoulder, her tears falling onto his shirt. She hadn't even realized she'd started crying.

"You weren't exactly quiet."

"James, I just, I don't understand how she could say that, like I've done something wrong by being myself."

"I don't know, Lils, I don't know. But it's not true, you know that right?"

"Yeah," the word is a sigh. "I can't wait until we can go home."

"Soon. We'll be home soon."

* * *

Dumbledore sends a patronus early the next morning, the rising sun bathing the room in a dusty pink. They can go home. Peter has been caught, and they'll be safe.

"Let's get out of here," Lily says, picking up at sleeping Harry.

"Are you sure you don't want to wait until your sister is awake? Say goodbye?"

"No, she's said all she has to say. I'll leave a note." Lily knew it was harsh, but this was the closure she needed. A clean break, at least for now. Yes, her heart felt chipped, but it would heal, and after last night's boiling words, she finally felt like she could breathe.

James nods, understanding. "Let's go."

* * *

They leave as the sun rises over the horizon, Petunia's words still booming in Lily's ears. Some things weren't meant to be. But life would go on. Petunia was right, she did want the whole galaxy at her fingertips, because that was magic. That was what she'd fought for, the stars and the planets and hope of the cosmos. And she wouldn't settle for anything less.

* * *

 _I'm sorry we left so abruptly, thank you both for your hospitality. Petunia, I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I like the stardust on my fingers, and I can't change that. I can't change who I am. - Lily_


End file.
